ETHNICITY AND DENOMINATION – ORTHODOXISM AND CATHOLICISM NICHIFOR CRAINIC AND “GÎNDIREA”. NATIONALISM AND ORTHODOXISM IN INTERWAR ROMANIA (I) IONUŢ BILIUŢĂ 1. Prolegomena After 1918, the struggle to define the Romanian ethnicity became bitterer than ever. A strong two-folded debate developed between the Westernizers and the traditionalists. People like Nichifor Crainic from “Gîndirea” started to publish extensively on the relation between Romanian culture, the Romanian specificity, the village and Orthodoxy to shape a traditionalist view regarding the character of a future Romanian culture. Continuing the 19th century project of the Junimists emphasizing an organic culture starting from the village, Nichifor Crainic framed a new nationalist project and that project was the birth of the Romanian culture in the category of Orthodox spirituality. The aim of this article is to lay out the way in which Orthodoxy is present in the nationalist discourse of Nichifor Crainic. I will point out that Orthodoxy played a major role in Nichifor Crainic’s conception of nationalism providing a spiritual background for any definition of the Romanian nation. Another aim is to determine that the Romanian traditionalist camp, represented by Nichifor Crainic, did not have a unitary discourse about the relation between Romanianness and Orthodoxy. The fact that Nichifor Crainic’s speech about the relation between Orthodoxy, the village and the nation changed dramatically during the interwar period is a proof that behind Nichifor Crainic’s nationalist Orthodoxism there were strong political sympathies. As Moeller van den Bruck in Germany1, Crainic began his political career from a neutral position, that of an intellectual uninterested in the political torments of his age, and he ended up as one of the first ideologues of the Romanian Fascist yoke. 2. “Gîndirea” and Nichifor Crainic “Gîndirea” was first issued on May 1, 1921 by a group of young Romanian intellectuals coming from the Transylvanian city of Cluj-Napoca like Lucian 1 Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair. A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology, Berkeley – Los Angeles, 1961, p. 205. “Historical Yearbook”, vol. IV, 2007, pp. 87-96 88 Ionuţ Biliuţă Blaga, Adrian Maniu, Gib I. Mihăiescu, Emil Isac, Radu Dragnea, D. Tomescu, D. I. Cucu and Cezar Petrescu. As Dumitru Micu has shown, quoting Cezar Petrescu, one of the first directors of the publication, “Gîndirea” was supposed to become a Romanian response on the cultural market to the Hungarian and Saxon cultural publication with a long tradition in sustaining a national culture2. As Keith Hitchins has pointed out, “it was largely sociologists, literary critics, theologians, and poets who carried on the speculative and prophetic traditions in the Romanian thought and who, consequently, found themselves in the forefront of a great debate over the nature of Romanian ethnicity and culture.”3 Although the purpose of the journal was not declared as a nationalist rostrum from which the Romanian nationality should be proclaimed, it was obvious that confronted with superior cultures like the Saxons and the Hungarians with a long printing press tradition, the Romanian elite attempted to frame a nationalist cultural speech. The words of one of the leading founders of “Gîndirea” are proof enough for the previous statements: the country [Transylvania] “needs the light of “Gîndirea” as it needed at one time the comforter of the “Luceafărul” … because some of the messengers of “Luceafărul” have died, others are ministers, and others do not write it is a duty in a new Romania to try to publish a review as good as in the times of foreign oppression.”4 On a larger scale, the first efforts of the people gathered around this journal were to fit into an already existing national paradigm of ethnic homogenization and to build a concept of a unitary Romanian culture based on common national grounds. Despite the old generation that completed the union, satisfied with the total success of 1918 and who thought that unification meant the end of the hardships for the Romanian nation, the lack of a unitary Romanian culture and literature seemed to be the main focus of the early collaborators from “Gîndirea”5. Accordingly, the literary program of the contributors of the journal is deliberately missing in order to insure a larger representation of all the literary trends of the age. As one of the contributors pointed out: “Once more we enlighten the eager ones that we did not want to represent a current or a trend. We wait for their crystallization around us or around others, we will see about that. Until then and maybe from that particular point to the future we will open widely the columns for all the writers and all the talents who would feel comfortable under the covers of our poor journal. In our undeveloped literary movement there is place only for eclectic publications.”6 As Dumitru Micu has shown, the trends in the review were almost contradictory7: Nicolae Iorga’s texts in which he defied the “modernist spirit” 2 Dumitru Micu, Gîndirea şi gîndirismul, Bucureşti, 1975, p. 12. 3 Keith Hitchins, “Gîndirea”: Nationalism in a Spiritual Guise, in Kenneth Jowitt (ed.), Social Change in Romania, 1860–1940. A Debate on Development in a European Nation, Berkeley, 1978, p. 140. 4 Adrian Maniu, Cuvinte pentru drum, in “Gîndirea”, I, 1921, no 1, p. 3. 5 Keith Hitchins, “Gîndirea”: Nationalism …, p. 147. 6 Cronica măruntă, in “Gîndirea”, I, 15 May 1921, no 2, p. 38. 7 Dumitru Micu, op. cit., p. 18. Nichifor Crainic and “Gîndirea” 89 contrary to the autochthon tradition and prophesied its diminishment8, Pamfil Şeicaru’s neosemănătorist approach which tended in Iorga’s direct tradition to praise the contribution of “Semănătorul”9 and to dismantle the longing of the Romanian culture towards the Western culture depicted as the worse that could happen to the Romanian people10, and the anti-Catholic contributions of G. M. Ivanov who preached for a “third dictatorship”, namely “the only possible democracy – the Christian one.”11 Nichifor Crainic was one of the first non-Transylvanian intellectuals invited to join the editorial board of “Gîndirea” by some of his acquaintances, Lucian Blaga and Cezar Petrescu.12 Also, he will prove the most important theoretician of traditionalism in an Orthodox key. Ioan Dobre or Nichifor Crainic was born on December 24, 1889 in a small village called Bulbucata (Vlaşca). Between 1908 and 1912 he studied at the Central Seminary in Bucharest hoping that he could fulfill his family ambitions and become a priest. During this period he was influenced especially by Nicolae Iorga and his nationalistic discourse which followed closely the 19th century aversion of the Junimists against the cultural imports from Western countries, especially from France. The influence of Nicolae Iorga over the young Ioan Dobre continued to be intense during his years of studentship at the Faculty of Theology in Bucharest (1912-1916). In 1916 he published his first volume of poems Şesuri natale (Native fields). Between 1916 and 1918 he was concentrated on the Romanian army fighting in the World War One and during this period he became even more influenced by the personality of Nicolae Iorga which was one of the main artisans of the Romanian entrance into the war. After the war, Crainic published another volume of poetry called Darurile pămîntului (The Gifts of the Land) and in the same year, following Lucian Blaga’s advice, he went to Viena to study Philosophy. After 1921 he started to collaborate with “Gîndirea”. Nichifor Crainic’s activity in “Gîndirea” had three stages. In the first stage, between 1921 and 1926 Crainic had a moderate position towards the relationship between nationalism and Orthodoxy. Because he was not in charge of “Gîndirea”, but only one of its main contributors, he had to cope with the demands of the editorial board from Cluj. In this period Crainic seemed preoccupied with a broader theme. How was a Romanian authentic culture, genuine and autochthon possible? It is a period for a larger scale exploration for a discourse of the elites according to the principles stated by the initial eclectic program of the journal. A second stage in Nichifor Crainic’s gîndirism was between 1926 and 1933. In 1926 he became the sole director of the journal and “Gîndirea” moved to Bucharest. A greater cultural visibility, the emergence of rightist movements and the obvious failure of the 8 Nicolae Iorga, Elementele culturii româneşti, in “Gîndirea”, III, 5 December 1923, no 7, pp. 145-147. 9 Pe marginea unui volum omagial, ibidem, I, 15 January 1922, no 20, p. 383. 10 Literatura neînsufleţită, ibidem, II, 5 December 1922, no 9, pp. 73-74. 11 G. M. Ivanov, A treia dictatură, ibidem, III, 5 April 1924, no 14, p. 341. 12 Nichifor Crainic, Zile albe. Zile negre, Bucureşti, 1991, p. 171. 90 Ionuţ Biliuţă nationalist ideology of the official Liberal government, the coming into existence on the Romanian political scene of the National Peasants Party with a strong Greek-Catholic elite support, the affair relating to the Concordat between the Romanian state and the Vatican were all motifs for a renegotiation of “Gîndirea”’s cultural environment. There is an obvious shift in both Crainic’s understanding of Romanian nationalism and its connection with spirituality and Orthodoxy and people behind “Gîndirea” because in this period Crainic started to develop into a politicized intellectual.13 Fr. Dumitru Stăniloae, Vasile Băncilă or Dragoş Protopopescu became the leading voices of a young generation revolted against the governmental patronized pro-Western culture. As for Crainic, he started to button up the whole details of his ethno- theological discourse about the Romanian nation. It is no wonder that his most programmatic text Sensul tradiţiei (The Meaning of Tradition) was written in this particular period of time.